Iron Stomach
by sss979
Summary: (9th Doctor) "Missing" (continuation of) scene in "Boom Town." This Doctor is anything but squeamish when it comes to torture and death.


Title: Iron Stomach

Rating: PG

Summary: "Missing" (continuation of) scene in "Boom Town." This Doctor is anything but squeamish when it comes to torture and death.

_i"I wonder if you could do it. To sit with a creature you're about to kill and take supper. How strong is your stomach?" /i- Blon Slitheen_, "Boom Town"

p"Public execution is a slow death."

pI watched the woman across the table impassively. I knew where this was going, what she was trying to do. She wanted my sympathy, wanted me to decide that she really didn't deserve the fate she was being forcibly resigned to.

pShe didn't know me very well.

p"They prepare a thin ascetic acid, lower me into the cauldron, and boil me."

pHer eyes were on mine, watching for the slightest flinch, the tiniest indication that maybe, just maybe, my sympathies could be bought. She'd tried her threats and her charades - all of the escape attempts I'd been expecting from the moment she made her request for a last meal. "Don't I have rights?" she'd asked, watching for my reaction. Luckily, it was a rhetorical question. She wouldn't have much liked my answer.

p"The acidity is perfectly gauged to strip away the skin."

pI lowered my eyes to the table, but not out of shame. Not out of hesitation or uncertainty. Not even out of the respect for life and death I'd shown at her challenge in the Tardis. I lowered them simply to break the visual imagery she was trying to convey with her expression as well as her tone. I wasn't squeamish. But I didn't revel in the sadism of torture techniques either. Hearing the details of her execution wouldn't change anything, and I didn't care to envision it.

pI looked back up again quickly as I realized she may take my shifted gaze for something other than what it was.

p"Internal organs fall out into the liquid," she continued, "and I become soup. And still alive. Still screaming."

pThis was the part where I was supposed to squirm at the horror of it all. That was what she was waiting for. Instead, I answered her simply. "I don't make the law."

p"But you deliver it."

pThose words cut, though for reasons she couldn't possibly understand. All my lives I had "delivered law," posing in the role of judge, jury, and executioner to any number of civilizations - even my own. It wasn't a role I cherished, and one I even tried to avoid. But I couldn't. Everywhere I turned, somehow, it fell to me to make the call. Right and wrong, my judgment call on justice. I hated it. But it didn't change.

pThis time, my eyes stayed down longer.

p"Will you stay to watch?" she taunted.

p"What else can I do?" I asked as I lifted my gaze to hers again. What did she even want from me? She couldn't possibly expect that I would just let her walk away.

pShe was excited at the prospect of being allowed to offer an alternative. I could hear it in her voice, tighter and higher, the flash in her eyes as she considered she might have a way out. "The Slitheen family is huge. There's a lot more of us, all scattered off world. Take me to them. Take me somewhere safe."

p"But then you'll just start again."

p"I promise I won't."

p"You've been in that skin suit too long. You've forgotten. There used to be a real Margaret Blaine. You killed her and slipped her and used skin. You're pleading for mercy out of a dead woman's lips."

pBlon's jaw tightened, eyes focusing in on me again. "Perhaps I have got used to it. A human life. No, ordinary life."

pI lowered my eyes again, but not for long.

p"That's all I'm asking. Give me a chance, Doctor. I can change."

p"I don't believe you."

p"You don't believe people can change?"

p"Some people, yes. But not you."

p"Who are you to decide that?"

pI leaned forward, shifting my posture as I tired of the defensive position. I'd listened to her pleas for long enough. She needed a reminder of why we were sitting here in the first place. Why she knew me at all. "I'm the one who stopped you," I said low, "when you tried to destroy this planet. When you tried to kill six billion people to build your family's fortune."

p"Yes, I did, and I was wrong. But I've paid for that."

p"Oh, have you?"

p"I am alone, Doctor," she said, choking on the words. "Can you even imagine what that's like? To know that you alone escaped the fate that destroyed everyone you loved?"

pI drew in a breath to hold back the indignant anger that suddenly and unexpectedly flared to life. She had no idea who she was talking to...

p"You took everything from me, Doctor. I should hate you for that."

p"Hate me all you like. It doesn't change anything."

p"Of course not. You're a monster."

p"Oh, you have no idea."

p"Don't I?"

pShe was baiting me. She was no stranger to manipulative tactics, and she could see she'd touched a nerve. The smartest thing to do now would be to remain silent. But the urge for justification was too strong.

p"Do you know what your trouble is, Blon? You're small minded. You see things only from one perspective, and that's your own. You measure a monster by the laws of justice created by your own people. But I'm not one of your people. But I've seen real monsters. Monsters that kill and torture and enslave for sport, or personal gain. And you, in your stolen skin with your plans to kill billions, aren't far from my definition of a monster."

p"And you are?"

pMy eyes narrowed at her and she smirked, cold and sadistic.

p"You know, it's funny. I didn't realize who you were, when we first met."

p"Who I am?"

p"In my part of the galaxy, the Time Lords are a legend. A myth, but little more. With their dimensionally transcendental capsules that skip across space and time. Their time vortex and Eye of Power, Rassilon and Omega and Zagreus, dragons and vampires and alternate universe..."

p"Am I supposed to be impressed?"

p"The impressive thing, Doctor, is the way the story ends. The complete obliteration of the Time Lords. The whole planet set alight by one of their own."

pI made sure my jaw was tight, eyes locked on hers, unflinching. The moment she'd stepped into the Tardis, she would've known that the legends held an element of truth. If she'd heard how they ended, of course she could put two and two together. I wasn't surprised. That didn't mean I liked hearing it.

p"Tell me, Doctor. Is that where you got your iron stomach?"

pI leaned forward slowly, dropping my voice and keeping it low and even as I addressed her with calm, cold clarity. "I've watched more people die than you've met in your life. Everyone that I've ever cared about has been ripped from my hands. My wife, my children - I listened to them scream as they burned to death in the clutches of a madman and his evil creations. And I walked away. I closed my eyes, and I walked away. So if you're expecting me to be squeamish about your planet's justice policies, you have another thing coming."

p"You don't have to be squeamish to have pity."

p"You don't want to die in a boiling pit of acid? There's an easy solution to that." Never taking my eyes off her, I flipped up the steak knife on the table beside my plate and held it out to her, handle first. "I won't stop you if you want to save me the trouble of dragging you halfway across the universe."

pShe paused for a long moment, eyeing the knife. Clearly it wasn't the response she'd been expecting.

p"No?" I challenged, flipping the blade around again and setting it on the table. "Then stop trying to convince me of the horrors of death. Because there's nothing you can tell me that tops what I've witnessed firsthand."


End file.
